For all practical and less costly purposes, video interviewsare definitely more advantageous than face-to-face ones during the first round of interview in the hiring process, both for the recruiting company and the applicant.

Traditional face-to-face interviews entail overhead costs for the company because the recruiters have to be billeted in the hotel, have to rent a car to drive around town and have to set up a booth for applicants to be interviewed.

It will also scare applicants a bit meeting a recruiter face-to-face. Qualified applicants will get edgy and cannot focus answering on technical questions well.

Meanwhile, applicants don’t even get to recognize the recruiter via webcam and vice versa because the interview questions are pre-recorded. One advantage about pre-recorded questions on the part of the applicants is that the set of questions are the same which means no matter what their personal circumstances are, all applicants get equal opportunity.

On the other hand, on the part of the hiring companies, their recruiters don’t have to be rushing through the interview process because of a meeting to catch.

Another practicality of video interviewing is for companies who are intent on recruiting new hires from around the globe. It is at the most convenient time of the applicant to respond via video the questions in his or her own time zone. So, both recruiter and applicant don’t need to align their schedules.

According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, six percent of employers used video interviews in 2010 but the number has upped to 11 percent in 2011. In other words, this is a trend that’s definitely taking off.

So, what do you think about online video interviews? Aren’t they less stressful for job applicants and recruiters? Learn more about how you can improve your hiring process with video interview here!